[Thread] Twitter had earlier claimed that it had shut accounts which had asked for a repeat of 1984. I did a quick search and found tens of accounts which had used the phrase 'repeat 1984' that are still active and merrily tweeting away.
How easy it is to find these tweets? Check the search query in the screenshot. You enter that query that I have used => 'repeat 1984 until:2021-1-27' into the Twitter search box, and then go to the 'Latest' tab (arrow).
If it is this easy to find these tweets, how is that @TwitterIndia hasn't found these tweets?
Set 1.
Set 2.
Set 3.
Beyond the ones that I have posted in this thread, there are many such tweets that Twitter hasn't taken down. It would take one Twitter employee probably a couple hours to track down all these tweets and take them down. So, why hasn't it happened?
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After 14 months of the Pulwama attack, we still don't know who's been held accountable for the death of 40 CRPF personnel. We haven't been told how 300 kilos of explosives were sourced and transported. Who leaked the route that CRPF convoy was going to take? No answers.
The media doesn't ask these questions despite all the claims of putting 'Nation first'. That's because for them, 'Nation first' = 'Government first'. Those who ask these questions are declared anti-national, and rest will wait for a figure of how many of 'theirs' could we kill.
Eventually, a friendly news agency will quote 'sources' and put out some figure of the number 'we' killed, and it will be diligently broadcasted by every media org, again without any questions asked. In case of Balakot, till date we haven't seen a single image of the 300 dead.
He's a columnist at @ThePrintIndia. Talks about flashing at mothers and spitting on them. A proud moment for the investors, owners and employees of @ThePrintIndia, who continue their association with this individual without protest.
He also appears regularly on channels like @IndiaToday, @republic and @TimesNow. I have very little hope in Indian TV channels making any amends because these channels are beyond shaming.
However, I do intend to shame every organisation who chooses to give space to this individual at every opportunity I get, and let your audience know that this is your choice.
Thread: How social media companies are fooling us all regarding their failures to fact-check issues on social media.
I want to use this simple example to explain what social media companies can do and are choosing not to.
An account with 10 followers tweeted about a missing uncle in the middle of the strife going on in Minneapolis, US, and was retweeted 14.5k times. This is a common strategy to spread misinformation - Anonymous account + image or video + emotional story during a tense situation.
The image is an old image and was featured on the website of Star Tribune in November 2017.
The reason I looked up the stats, is because of @DilliDurAst's observation that @rahulgandhi neither tweeted Sonia Gandhi's announcement that @INCIndia will pay for train tickets of migrant labour nor did he tweet in support of @priyankagandhi recently during the bus controversy.
In our article, along with copies of post mortem, police statements and statements of villagers, we stated that OpIndia had taken the muddled thoughts of a grieving father desperately looking for answers, and converted it into a story without any investigation into the matter.2/7
After our piece was published, OpIndia published a counter-piece, claiming that we were labeling the father as a liar. We never made any judgement on the father, and maintained that he was grieving, and looking for answers. OpIndia lied in their defence, but that's expected. 3/7
Thread: Ever since it has been revealed that the congregation at Nizamuddin markaz has led to a spurt of COVID +ve cases, the right-wing has used this opportunity to inject innumerable number of videos with the false claim that these are Muslims trying to spread coronavirus.
1/n
Some of the videos are recent (but before the mass breakout of coronavirus in India), while most are fairly old (pre-2019), and some are not even from India. These videos have been used as part of a systematic campaign to delegitimize the Muslim community.
2/n
Misinformation deepen one's biases and has real life consequences for people. We are already seeing reports of attacks and discrimination against Muslims from different parts of India. The attacks are very often concentrated on members of the lower economic strata.
3/n